Video: Google Earth Captures Carnage of Emerald Triangle Pot Grows

To illustrate: students and faculty at the Humboldt State Institute for Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research have created “The Green Rush Google Earth Tour” – a video flyover of a 24,000 acre watershed in the Southern Humboldt. It’s beautiful, rugged country, save for the herpes-like red dots representing over 600 industrial pot grows. Researchers found 286 greenhouses, 281 grows, and roughly 20,100 pot plants (or one plant an acre, and 540 plants per square mile) in the area.

The grows are using an estimated using 18 million gallons of water per season, most of which is illegally pumped directly from tributaries to the Eel River — choking off vital streams and creeks, and endangering wildlife. Out of control, unregulated pot growing is picking up where the logging industry left off: clear-cutting, grading, creating run-off, and ruining the environment.

As one researcher eloquently put it: “a salmon really does not give a shit if it’s a logging company or a grower spewing pesticides and silt into its home. Both cause environmental damage and kill fish. It is really harmful to environmental restoration efforts to say ‘let’s just ignore the eco-impacts that the marijuana industry has on critters.'”

“A standard of environmental and social responsibility is needed for marijuana agriculture to be compatible with these rural landscapes in the long run,” the video concludes.

We would add that there’s a reason moonshiners aren’t cutting down trees to distill whiskey in the Emerald Triangle. Alcohol – a more toxic, addictive and destructive drug than cannabis – is legal, taxed, regulated, and so cheap it renders such bootlegging profitless.

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